Albert Leo Schlageter

Albert Leo Schlageter (12 August 1894-26 May 1923) was a German Freikorps soldier and Nazi collaborator who was executed by France for sabotaging French Army positions in the Ruhr after the Treaty of Versailles.

Biography
Albert Leo Schlageter was born on 12 August 1894 in Schoenau im Schwarzwald, Baden, German Empire, and he served as a voluntary emergency worker for the Imperial German Army during World War I, seeing action on the Western Front. After the war, he joined a right-wing Catholic student group and took part in the battles between the Reichswehr and communists in addition to the failed Kapp Putsch. Schlageter's unit of the Freikorps also fought against rebellious Poles in Silesia during their failed uprisings against the Weimar Republic. During the 1921 Third Silesian Uprising, his group terrorized Poles and Germans who were accused of being anti-Nazi, and he led a group of nationalists into the occupied Ruhr in 1923 to sabotage French Army occupation forces there. The group derailed a few trains, leading to the French arresting Schlageter. On 26 May 1923, he was executed by firing squad on Golzheimer Heath, near Dusseldorf. Rudolf Hoess and Martin Bormann avenged him by killing one of the nationalists in his group, a man who was believed to have betrayed Schlageter.